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Travel back just two short months to a quintessential scene: it’s a farm so close to suburban sprawl you can practically see the retail developments from the gravel road. A large American flag hangs from the door of a big, white barn. Classic red tractors surround an area filled with folding chairs as music is piped in and volunteers in Amy for America T-shirts work the crowd with clipboards in hand.

This is LaVon and Craig Griffieon’s family farm in Ankeny and on this day it’s the site of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s campaign event announcing her proposals for agriculture.

Iowa City  poet Caleb Rainey  released his second collection of poems titled "Heart Notes" this week. The book dives into the ups and downs of relationships through a range of love poems. 

"These poems felt very close to me, important to me, part of who I am, that it just needed to be out," Rainey says.

Rainey, who publishes under the name "The Negro Artist" joins Talk of Iowa host Charity Nebbe to discuss the inspirations and motivations behind his writing. He also reads several poems on air.

A SIMPLE LOVE POEM

(a selection from "Heart Notes" by The Negro Artist)

I'm so in love I may beed a doctor

after a fall like that. 

The population of monarch butterflies has been cut in half over the last decade, according to University of Wisconsin Arboretum Director Karen Oberhauser. 

Oberhauser joins Talk of Iowa host Charity Nebbe to  discuss the latest updates on the status of monarch butterflies. She has dedicated 35 years to studying the species. As monarch butterfly populations dwindled,  her resarch expanded to focus on conservation. 

Oberhauser says monarchs have recently been faring better and have risen in population throughout the last two years.  

Iowa farmers are finding themselves caught between the White House and China in the president's disputes over trade and agriculture policy. Some say their support for him is wearing thin. On the ninth episode of Caucus Land, we'll look at how Democratic presidential candidates are trying to win them over.

When Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969, it was an instant success. However, it took 25 years for the author to finish his masterpiece. Some of those years were spent in Iowa and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a veteran of World War II, who is "unstuck in time"  and claims to have been abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. The book explores Pilgrim's life and the aftermath of his experience as a prisoner of war in Germany and how it affected his life.

This program originally aired on April 9, 2018.

When poet Stephen Kuusisto was 38 years old, he found himself unemployed, legally blind, and lonely. He made a decision that would radically change his life: he got a seeing eye dog.

On this Talk of Iowa, Charity Nebbe talks with Kuusisto about how his dog, Corky, opened up the world to him. His latest memoir, Have Dog, Will Travel, details Kuusisto's transformative decision to work with a guide dog after 38 years of downplaying his limited vision. 

This program originally aired on April 3, 2018.

Just over sixty years ago in September of 1957, Terrence Roberts and eight other young people became the first African American students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. These nine students, known as the Little Rock Nine, faced mobs of angry protesters as they tried to enter the school.

Jessica Sheridan’s plan was to have her first daughter at the local hospital, five minutes from her house in Iowa Falls. But when she was seven months pregnant, that plan suddenly changed.

Carson King, 24, has raised over $1 million for charity and a wave of controversy after going viral with a sign requesting beer money at the Cyclone-Hawkeye game on Sept. 14. Media Ethicist and Iowa State University Professor Michael Bugega joins this 'News Buzz' edition of River to River to give his perspective on the investigation of Carson's past tweets by The Des Moines Register and the following backlash. 

All this week, Talk of Iowa has explored the question “Iowa: Is this home?” On the final episode of this Iowa Week series, six stories of finding, or perhaps not finding, home from Iowans originally from other parts of the country and the globe.

Sometimes it feels like Iowa is the country’s best kept secret. Iowans tend to be pretty happy with the quality of life, and yet there are still only 3.1 million of us.

On this edition of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe explores the economic and social reasons that people decide on to move to Iowa. Liesl Eathington, an assistant scientist and Iowa Community Indicators Program Coordinator at Iowa State University, joins Charity for part four of our “Iowa Week: Is This Home?” series.

On a hot September day, five Japanese men arrived at Rod Pierce’s central Iowa farm. They represented feed mills and livestock cooperatives, and were there to see the corn they may eventually buy. 

Pierce invited them to walk among his rows of corn, climb into the cab of an 8-head combine and poke their heads into one his empty grain storage bins. 

Pierce grows mostly corn on his 1,700 acres and he knows about one-fifth of the corn grown in the United States gets exported. Japan’s second only to Mexico as a customer of U.S. corn. 

Trade tariffs on imported goods are impacting the bottom lines of many Iowa businesses, and may even drive some to change their ticket prices and the products they offer.